mbe

    Breeding fish was the most attractive aspect to me when I first enter the fish hobby and still is today. A few years ago, I started with two aquariums; one that held twenty gallons of water (slang: "20g") and one that held only five -- a 5g.
     My first breeding sucess came when I purchased a pair of admittedly ragged Guppies from a nearby Petco. The female gave birth to twenty-seven fry (baby fish). One one survived to adulthood. A beautiful male -- with a polka dot, streaked tail pattern. Unfortunately, he was also a runt and only reached a size of a little more than an inch.
     Soon, my fry dropout rate decreased dramatically. I started feeding live foods, like baby brine shrimp, in addition to crushed flakes. I raised a few more Guppies. I gained experience on changing water in a fry tank. I tried to be selective, culling deformed, underdeveloped fish. Then, unable to produce a "decent" specimen, I gave up.
     The problem was I was comparing my Guppies to glistening photos of show Guppies in a fish book I'd seen. I didn't know I basically had a genetically unsound strain of feeder Guppies. Anyway, I moved on to better things ... :)
     By now I was sick of livebearers, so on to Cichlids, Tetras and Gourami. Pearl Gourami and Angelfish spawned for me. WIth Tetras, I wasn't so lucky -- the closest I got was sexing my batch of Pristella Tetras, and that was no easy feat. I had an ammonia spike that killed my pair of Pearl Gourami. My Angelfish pair kept spawning and spwaning, fertile eggs too! but I opted to sell them. By this time, I had heard of Betta Splendens. Forget Cichlids! :)
     My first six Bettas came from Rita Eby. Between that lot, I had about eight spawns. Maybe I'm just lucky -- I've never found spawning Bettas hard. Guess how many fry survived to adulthood out of more than 1,000 eggs? Only one! He's a gorgeous red and black butterfly. Why? I had no idea what I was doing.
      I still don't ... :) No, okay, now i have "some" idea what of what I'm doing.
     I'm going into this Betta thing full stream. I'm planning to set up a fishroom with a decent number of 10g tanks. I want to develop a new reddish-purple strain of Bettas. I am only taking baby steps, like starting red and blue strains, but I'll get there some day. Check back with me often ... :)